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Jul 1st, 2024 at 07:05:36 - Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4) |
I wasn't quite sure about this one throughout the first couple hours because:
1. It's Uncharted without Nathan Drake. Instead, you play as Chloe, with sidekick Nadine, two women with relationships to the Drakes who appear in some of the previous games. So it seemed like this was a spin-off, and I assumed it would be lesser than the mainline games. It also doesn't explain who these characters are, though you get that through their banter later on.
2. Chloe and Nadine's banter isn't as funny as Nathan's muttering or his banter with whoever he is with. Especially without knowing really who they are, it was hard to get a read on their personalities at first. The humor is more deadpan/sarcastic.
3. The game jumps right in with no context for why they are out treasure hunting (though again this is explained later). There is about 15 minutes of setting the scene before Chloe and Nadine are off toward some Indian ruins. The speed at which it jumped in was off-putting because the Uncharted games always spend time setting up the adventure.
4. The first main area is on the neon rooftops of a city with a lot of tight spaces, uncharacteristic of the open vistas of Uncharted games. The second main area was open-world-ish. Chloe and Nadine drive around in a jeep looking for clues, and they can find all of these discs scattered around the area. The discs are purely optional (and once I realized this, I ignored them). Only after this section does the game proceed into standard Uncharted territory, climbing around ancient ruins.
It wasn't until they get to the standard Uncharted territory that the game really clicked for me. At some point, Chloe and Nadine had talked enough to help me understand who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. And by the time we get to the standard Uncharted territory, all the typical features of the mainline games are shining. The environments are absolutely gorgeous, both outside and inside. I remember seeing the massive statues of Ganesh from across a valley, knowing that I was going to make my way to them, climb around them, and eventually go inside them. There is plenty of exploration, as well as combat and puzzles, both of which are as expected. I did particularly enjoy the puzzles with the statues swinging weapons around.
In a way, Lost Legacy ended up feeling like a sort of "greatest hits" of aspects of other Uncharted games. For example, the final sequence on a train reminded me of other train sequences in the series; the open-world-ish area with the jeep reminded me of the jeep sequences in Uncharted 4; etc. The two main characters are callbacks to older games, it brings Sam Drake back, etc. etc. In the end, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Lost Legacy. It's not a lesser game than the mainline ones; in fact, one could argue that it streamlines the formula, doing away with flashbacks, longer cut scenes, and other extraneous type missions. It's really quite compact, with a short run time (7 hours for me) that gets you in and out, and tells a fun treasure hunting story along the way. I ended up appreciating how the context and characters were revealed through the characters' banter as they explored. It was an organic way to present that stuff.
So, what started as a game I was unsure about ended up being one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
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Jul 1st, 2024 at 06:28:43 - Dave the Diver (PS4) |
I’m about to start rapid-firing these entries as I finish up the last of my PS4 games and sign up for a gaming-filled July with a month of Game Pass. The last longer game I had on PS Plus was Dave the Diver, which was so great. I had some vague idea of what it was, some hybrid of restaurant management sim and exploration/roguelike that got both praised and critiqued for the huge number of genres and gameplay activities it mashed together. Well, let me tell you, mash genres together it does. The restaurant management sim and the roguelike are the big parts, but there is also farming sim, Pokémon-style collect-‘em-all, minigames (one is a rhythm game, one is an endless runner game, one is an arcade shooter, etc.), and more. The whole thing is wrapped in a beautifully pixelated package that reminded me of an old JRPG, or like something quirky like Undertale. It’s super clever, it’s charming, it’s funny, and it’ll keep surprising you for the duration.
Here's the basic gameplay loop. (You are Dave, by the way, and you dive for fish to supply your friend’s sushi restaurant). There are three parts of the day: morning, afternoon, and night. You dive in the morning and afternoon. Catch the fish, prepare the menu for the restaurant, and then work the sushi restaurant at night. Repeat. There are, of course, a bunch of characters and a lot of things that happen around the basic gameplay loop. The diving is the exploration/roguelike. You’ll dive deeper and deeper, upgrade your suit, your oxygen, your weapons, etc. It can get repetitive, as you are constantly chasing the next upgrade. Dive, dive, sushi, dive, dive, sushi, dive, dive, sushi. But the Blue Hole (the area where you are diving) changes every day, so no two dives are ever the same. Some things will always be in the same spot, and certain types of fish and resources exist in certain depth ranges, so you’ll know generally where you need to go if you are looking for something specific.
There are probably a hundred types of fish overall, and coupled with the variety of weapon modifications that you get, and the fact that many fish and weapon mods require different strategies or actions to interact with, there is great variety in the combat. Simple seahorses and things you can pick up with a net. Then, your main weapon types are a harpoon gun (which has different “tips”—poison tip does damage over time, lightning tip has a chance to shock and slow fish, etc.) and gun guns (a basic rifle, a sniper rifle [my favorite because it can be used at distance to keep you safe!], a triple-shotgun, etc.). When you shoot a fish with a harpoon gun and bring its health down to some amount, as long as it’s not too simple a catch, you complete a quick-time event to reel it in. For the poison tip, you rotate the left stick; for the regular harpoon, you mash X; for the lightning tip, you press X when a needle passes through the sweet spot of a power meter; and so on. Most fish are straightforward to catch, but others are aggressive (e.g., the sharks) and pose a real threat to Dave. You will die, possibly a lot. I probably died 10 or 15 times during regular dives, which means that I lost all my stuff from my dives 10 or 15 times. It is frustrating to die, but it’s always your fault! Usually when I died, my inventory was full or over full (which slows your movement), and I was trying to kill a big shark or something before going back to the boat, when I should have just returned. I died more on boss fights, which are intense and creative with a trick or two you need to figure out, but those will just let you restart the fight, which was nice.
The sushi restaurant management sim was way more fun than I thought it would be. I tend to avoid management sims, but the way that it connected to the diving made it more meaningful. You catch the fish, use what you caught to create the restaurant’s menu each night, and help run food. You also invest your hard-earned money into hiring and training restaurant staff, and it’s satisfying to see the restaurant operating at peak efficiency! Sometimes there are special events at the restaurant, for example when a VIP (like a celebrity chef) comes to visit and demands a special dish. These extra challenges are fun, and you are rewarded with one of Dave the Diver’s amazing cut scenes.
I could sit here and write on and on about this, but I think that my favorite thing, and what I am most impressed by, is the attention to detail in every aspect of the game, from the art style to the sushi dishes. Dave the Diver integrated several genres (some of which I tend not to like) and put them in a package that I loved. I will probably think about this game for a long time!
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Jun 27th, 2024 at 10:25:17 - FAR: Lone Sails (PC) |
This is a short little sidescroller with Limbo/Inside/Journey vibes. Favorite parts: the musical score; the environmental events; and that it gives you no instructions, no tutorial. You begin the game at what looks like a shrine and walk to what looks like a vehicle. From there, you have to figure out how to operate the vehicle. It's not difficult, mind you, and some of its functional parts are conveniently labeled, but it's not immediately obvious what all the buttons do and how things interact.
And...well, that's the game! You learn how to operate the vehicle and go to the right until it's over. If you hit an obstacle, get out to solve a puzzle, which removes the obstacle, and continue. Along the way, you'll get some new parts to the vehicle, and there is some light "damage management" aspect to it, putting out fires and doing repairs.
You'll get a good feel for the environment, where the land is dried up (due to...environmental disaster? resource depletion?), and people have created these vehicles for moving across it. The aforementioned environmental events were neat and add some danger. It's certainly a solitary experience with some scenes for reflection where you can zoom out as your vehicle rolls across the landscape.
The end was interesting and sets it up for some sort of sequel, or at least other exploration of this world (which is currently on PS Plus and which I will play shortly). Yeah, short, simple, neat. The more well-known games in the genre are better, but this was a bit different with the vehicle management and definitely worth a look.
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Jun 24th, 2024 at 07:28:58 - Dredge (PS4) |
Dredge immediately reminded me of Sunless Sea, but it's simpler and friendlier. You are a fisherman who finds himself in a Lovecraftian sea, taking up the job of an angler at a local village. Not all is what it seems: at night, the fog rolls in an strange, terrifying creatures roam the water. Soon, an enigmatic figure calling himself The Collector sets you on your main quest, to find five sunken artifacts. There are, conveniently, five island areas on the map, so off you go from one to the other, fishing, upgrading your boat, and finding sunken things.
What I liked the most about Dredge was how it sucked me in to its simple gameplay loop. You go out, fish, return to town, sell fish. Use money to upgrade your ship, go out farther, fish, return to town, sell fish. Repeat. To fish successfully, you need specific rods for specific types of biomes (shallow, volcanic, abyssal, etc.), and faster engines to go farther. So, you can't explore unless you upgrade things. There are also messages in bottles, which you need to find to understand the story, special mutated fish (worth more money!), ship parts, treasure, and other things to find. You've always got a couple things you're looking for, always discovering new fish (I discovered about 50% of the total number, so there is WAY more out there!), or dredging up something useful.
There is also the underlying dread that keeps you moving. You generally only want to be out during the day; at night, things get dangerous. The dread made me cautious, but caution worked, in that I may not have experienced some of the more unnerving things in the game. That is, apparently if you don't sleep at night, you'll start seeing things and more weird phenomena will happen. But I almost always slept, and definitely never went two nights with no sleep, no nothing got too nightmarish. I wonder how nightmarish it gets?
The game itself is easy, with just the right amount of aforementioned dread, which helped lull me into its gameplay loop. You'll run into some rocks, see and hear other ghostly ships at night, and at the last island be harassed by swarming fish, but you probably won't die. I died one time from taking too much hull damage, and it just reloaded my last autosave from a couple minutes earlier.
The story is compelling and, along with the constant upgrading, kept me interested in moving forward from quest to quest, island to island. Each island has one main character on it, whose issue you have to resolve, whether it's finding their dead crewmates or reconciling a conflict between two brothers, before you can get to the main quest's artifact. I actually explored every single island on the map, sailed around looking for new characters, docks, shipwrecks, and other points of interest. There are some secrets scattered around, some shrines wherein you must place specific types of fish (I solved one and got an awesome crab trap), and some mysterious black rocks that never did anything for me and I have no idea what they were for.
Finally, I would also add that this is (weirdly?) an inventory management game. Since you're out fishing and collecting things, you will run out of storage space. All the objects are like Tetris pieces: you can rotate them and pack your hull just so. This was more satisfying than I thought, as in a typical game where I have to manage inventory space--say an open-world RPG--, I get frustrated. Making the inventory basically like a Tetris mini-game was a good call! It also helps that you're never far from somewhere to sell things. Your trips out to sea are always quick, so if you fill up, no problem. There's no penalty for going back and unloading, and it just takes a minute (plus, you'll get to sleep, and I was usually able to time my trips during the day).
Definitely enjoyed this one! There is plenty more to do if you want to collect all the fish, fully upgrade your ship, complete all the side quests. It's engrossing and tells a good story.
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